Hi @lightseeker,
I've been through quite a lot of difficult challenges in life... the last three years especially. I like to think it's given me a new perspective on what it important about life. I read your posts and thought I'd share them. Maybe you'll get something of it, maybe not...
1. Iife doesn't have to have some grand design or meaning. Finding what makes you happy or fulfilled is more than most people get, so look for what makes you happy.
2. To start to heal from terrible things you've had to endure in life, you need to find some positives that have come from it. That's not to say you have to see the trauma as a positive, or dismiss all the harm it's done... but try to find positives that have come from it. For example, maybe it's made me more resilient, or it's led me to find people in my life I would have never found otherwise
3. Don't try to be anything other than your real.self. if you need to pretend to please someone, then they're not someone you want in your life and they don't deserve to be. Find the people who like YOU, not the you that you feel you have to project.
I never fit in anywhere in life, never really connected to anyone. But a couple of years ago at the ripe old age of 53 I realised that I was trying to fit in with all the wrong people who wouldn't be there when I really needed them. So I decided I would find people who I could be more open and honest with... people who accepted me and wouldn't judge or reject me. Am I now surrounded by all these people who I'm amazingly clost to? No. But I have a few, and they've been there for me when no one else has and I'm in such a better place in my life now for having them in it. And that has allowed me to do things, and achieve things, I would have never imagined I could do 3 years ago. It's never too late, and you don't need to change a lot to make big changes in your life.
